Background: African American (AA) teens endure disproportionately high rates of adolescent dating abuse (ADA). There is a limited understanding of the community‐specific pathways that contribute to AA youth's higher risk. The purpose of this study is to investigate AA youths’ perspectives on the antecedents of ADA. Methods: Data were collected from interviews (n = 38) with AA teens. Thematic content analysis was employed to identify primary themes across the interviews. Analysis involved multiple rounds of iterative coding and the clustering of thematic constructs. Results: Interview participants described individual‐level and intergenerational explanations of ADA. The majority of participants could not identify community‐level factors. Discussion and Implications: Dating abuse perpetration and victimization were positioned as the product of personal deficits and exposure to abuse in individuals’ family environments. These findings underscore how structural and systemic determinants of dating abuse have not been translated to youth's meaning‐making processes regarding abuse. Implications for diversifying the public discourse on dating abuse will be discussed, and consciousness‐raising on the influence of upstream determinants of abuse will be presented.

中文翻译：

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“你像海绵一样吸收”：都市非洲裔美国青少年对约会虐待行为和受害因素的看法

背景：非洲裔美国（AA）青少年遭受的青少年约会滥用（ADA）的比例过高。对导致AA青年高风险的社区特定途径的了解有限。这项研究的目的是调查AA青年对ADA前因的看法。方法：从访谈中收集数据（n = 38）与AA青少年。主题内容分析被用来确定访谈中的主要主题。分析涉及多轮迭代编码和主题构造的聚类。结果：访谈参与者描述了ADA的个体水平和代际解释。大多数参与者无法确定社区层面的因素。讨论与启示：约会虐待行为和受害被定位为个人缺陷和个人家庭环境中遭受虐待的产物。这些发现强调了约会滥用的结构性和系统性决定因素如何未转化为青年关于滥用的意义形成过程。我们将讨论有关滥用约会的公众话语多样化的含义，